She works to keep Honor Flights flying high

Oct. 1, 2012

Written by

Abe Hardesty

City People writer

Nearly three years after her first Honor Flight adventure, Betty Waldrop couldn't talk about it without getting emotional.

Waldrop was telling the Honor Flight story to the Sertoma Club in December when she got to the part about the heroes' welcome for the local World War II veterans at the Greenville-Spartanburg International Airport.

"When they saw almost a thousand people at the bottom of the escalator," Waldrop said with tears arriving, "people tell me it's one of the most special things about it."

That's only one of the reasons Waldrop leads the local charge to raise funds for Honor Flights, a program that charters flights to take WWII veterans to Washington, D.C., to visit war memorials.

Waldrop, whose father, the late R.G. Buchanan, served in the Army during World War II, says the Honor Flights have raised the level of interest in WWII veterans and the odyssey they shared more than 60 years ago. The flights also inspire those veterans.

"I continue to do this because an 86-year-old man called after the first Honor Flight and said he's been invited to talk at schools about his World War II experience," Waldrop says. "He said, 'This gives me a reason to live.'

"If it encourages people that way, it's worth every penny of it," says Waldrop, who is one of 36 guardians who pay about $300 each to accompany the veterans on the Honor Flights. She also leads the way in raising about $60,000 for each trip so that the venture is free for WWII veterans.

Waldrop, a mother of two and grandmother of three who works as an office administrator at General Electric, has made five Honor Flight trips. She's planning a sixth one in the spring.

One Sertoma member and WWII veteran, D.H. Dannheisser, called the Honor Flight he took in April 2010 "one of the highlights of my life."

Another Sertoman and WWII veteran, Stan Sedran, said he was overwhelmed by the sight of hundreds of people — including a band — who greeted the veterans as they returned home.

"When we got off the plane and heard that band playing and saw hundreds of people, I teared up. I couldn't handle it," Sedran says. "And then a little boy runs up to me and asked me to sign his flag. I realized that I had never been thanked before."

(Page 2 of 3)

Comments like those keep Waldrop busy planning the next trip ... and the next. For her efforts last year, she received the 2010 Service to Mankind Award — Sertoma's highest honor bestowed upon a non-Sertoman — from the Greenville Sertoma Club.

For her, the best part about the award is the chance to tell others about the Upstate chapter of the Honor Flight.

"It's not just one person. It's a group of like minds, appreciative of the World War II veterans," says Waldrop, who got the idea for the Upstate chapter while watching television in the summer of 2007. In a CBS report, she learned about an Honor Flight group that took veterans in the Hendersonville, N.C., area to Washington.

"I wondered if we could do the same thing for veterans here," says Waldrop, who visited leaders of the project in Hendersonville to find the answer. She formed a planning committee in Greenville and took the first trip in May 2008.

"On that first one, we didn't know what we were doing. But it sure was exciting," says Waldrop, who schedules 36 guardians and 80 veterans on each trip.

The veterans are flown from GSP to Reagan Airport, where they receive a heroes' welcome, board a motor coach led by a police escort, and visit the memorials before returning home the same day. The whirlwind adventure begins at about 9 a.m. and ends at about 8 p.m.

Like her father, Waldrop's father in-law, also deceased, served in WWII.

"From the time I can remember, I loved looking at (my father's) scrapbooks that contained pictures of him in uniform in various places in the Pacific," she says. "I would read the letters and cards he sent to my three older sisters and brother from faraway places."

"I remember when we would drive from place to place, my dad would always stop and pick up any service member who was hitchhiking," Waldrop recalls. "I think his pride in America and his patriotism rubbed off on me."

(Page 3 of 3)

Her late father in-law, Charles Waldrop, received a Purple Heart for his service in combat in Europe. "I found his stories amazing — young men in their teens and 20s fighting for their country in terrible conditions.

"I have a lot of love and respect for each of the WWII veterans," Waldrop says. "They are a special group, and I am blessed that Honor Flight gives me an opportunity to be a part of their lives."

To keep the Honor Flights flying, Waldrop visits various groups in her attempt to "beg, borrow and steal" funds for the trips.

"I'm not doing anything special. I just happened to be the lucky one who saw it first," says Waldrop, whose husband, Dennis, is the mayor of Simpsonville.

She's been getting some help of late from schools. In 2008, Langston Charter School raised $2,000. Last year, a Plain Elementary School project raised $600.

In each of the last two years, Waldrop has been able to raise enough money to schedule an Honor Flight in the spring and another in the fall.

With each trip, she feels a sense of urgency.

"Our World War II veterans are dying," says Waldrop, "and many have not properly been thanked. Time is running out."